What Is a DEER Doing In My Front Yard?

In the eight years I've known him, my neighbor has been never been anything but brutally honest with me. One Sunday about a month ago, he told me a deer walked into our neighborhood and into my front yard. I asked him if he was joking. Twice. Then, he showed me photographic proof of an adolescent deer sauntering up the middle of our street and making a beeline for our place.

Said deer walked into my mini food forest and made a 6AM snack of my baby Fameuse apples and struggling blueberry bushes. Then walked around the house and picked all but one gorgeous Rainier cherry off our tree. And half of the tree's leaves.

via GIPHY

What in the world. I live in the city. I have dealt with teenage humans. I refuse to accept this, this teenage deer in my yard. Yes, we live on a dead-end street, bisected by a highway, leaving a patch of forest at each end, but COME ON!

This is the year I made myself grow up and realize the success of the garden depends, not on anyone else who wanted to be involved or help out but on me, the one who lives here and stares out the window at our plantings every day. And now, a deer. Nerp.

Happy to help bring more wildlife (and by wildlife I generally mean birds and insects) to our urban food desert/heat island, but eating the small amount of fruit produced by our young trees and shrubs? Nope. Not In My Front Yard, my friend. Not going to happen. Nopity nope nope nope.